


not yet a breach, but an expansion

by incognitajones



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-04 10:30:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18602710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incognitajones/pseuds/incognitajones
Summary: Kylo didn’t understand what he was feeling at first. It was such a foreign sensation—like fingernails scratching his scalp, but on the inside of his skull—that it didn't seem to have any cause.





	not yet a breach, but an expansion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this - you gave so many awesome prompts, it was hard to choose just one of them!

Kylo didn’t understand what he was feeling at first. It was such a foreign sensation—like fingernails scratching his scalp, but on the inside of his skull—that it didn't seem to have any cause. He thought it was his imagination, or some side effect of losing Snoke’s presence in his head.

He was also occupied trying to hold the splintering pieces of the First Order together, fending off both assassination attempts and more subtly political attempts to undermine him by Hux and all the other lackeys who’d crawled out of their holes now that Snoke was gone and thought they were strong enough to be Supreme Leader.

So he was sleeping even less than usual. And his head had never felt completely impermeable since he was old enough to realize what the Force was. Snoke had mined Kylo so thoroughly that even with the bastard dead, he was still learning what was solely himself and what had been the parasitical old manipulator.

Then he began to notice strange things about his own body. He’d find himself staring down at the palm of his spread hand, marvelling at its breadth. Or shifting his stance, noticing the muscles in his thighs and the soft weight hanging between them.

That was what finally clued him in. Instead of severing their connection, it seemed Rey had discovered a way to use it to stealthily invade his consciousness. Kylo had learned long ago how to maintain boundaries, build spiked fences around his thoughts—from everyone except his master, who could tear through them like wet paper. But even ignorant and untrained, Rey had found a way to worm through them and gain access to his body. She’d figured out how to manipulate their bond and draw on it almost undetectably.

Such skill! It was awe-inducing— _infuriating_. If only she’d see reason, and accept that there must be some fate the two of them had been placed here and now to fulfill. Why else would there be only two Force users left, as far as he knew, and both of them with vast power? But his mother had managed to convince her that the Resistance was morally purer, and his uncle had somehow made her believe that the Light side was less dangerous than the Dark.

(She’d learn.)

Still, once Kylo knew what was happening, he did nothing about it. After all, what strategic advantage could Rey gain from learning the feel of his body from the inside out? Even if she could see what he saw, hear what he heard, it would only serve to convince her that the First Order was invincible. If she witnessed how insignificant the Resistance was through his eyes, all the better.

(If she knew he knew, would she stop?)

He felt her presence again one night as he sat hunched over the desk in his quarters bolting down a bowl of Rodian curry. Food often drew Rey’s attention; he’d taken to eating more varied meals in an effort to show her a broader range than whatever meagre rations the Resistance were undoubtedly subsisting on. Whether that was generosity or a petty revenge, he didn’t know himself.

A cold trickle of sensation slipped down his spine, like ice water, and then a contrasting flare of hot arousal warmed his belly and roused his cock. What the Force was she playing at? Part of him was tempted to take himself in hand, start stroking until she either left in disgust or betrayed her interest...

He shook free of his juvenile fantasies. With the distraction gone he sensed her again—closer, far too invasive. 

The temptation to reveal that she wasn’t as stealthy as she thought overcame him. “Do you like the soup, Rey?” he asked conversationally.

A gasp that wasn’t his rolled up his throat, and the irritating tickle of her presence inside his body vanished.

He finished his meal in peace, left its detritus for the housekeeping droid, and prepared to return to the command deck. He drew on his gloves and set the cracked, fragile helmet carefully back on his head. At the door he paused, listening.

“I know you’re still there,” he said. “You might as well show yourself.”

The strange dampening silence that was the hallmark of their earlier links fell over his quarters. Nothing but the echoing sound of their twinned breathing broke it as he turned to see her standing by the desk.

She wore white now—how clichéd—but she looked well. No obvious new scars; healthy and muscular. Apparently the Resistance wasn’t starving yet. As before, he couldn’t see much of her surroundings, just a vague impression that she stood on the open ramp of a ship. Not the _Falcon_ , because that he’d recognize from the tiniest glimpse.

Kylo still wasn’t certain whether they’d actually touched in that squalid, leaky hut smelling of fish guts. His dreams insisted they had, but he might have imagined the instant of sparking contact with her roughened, bare fingertips before his uncle burst in with his typically violent reaction. 

Could they be tangible to each other this way? Or was it nothing but a ghostly connection, insubstantial and impotent like so many of the stupid Force techniques he’d wasted years learning?

He refused to believe it. Surely, if Snoke had feared or wanted the bond between them—either was possible, given how he’d tried to convince them it was his creation—it had to be more powerful than that. Using the Force as a commlink was hardly worth the effort, after all. There had to be more to this mysterious connection.

Kylo walked toward Rey, deliberately slowly, setting each footstep down heavily until he was close enough to see the freckles on her cheekbones and the wisps of hair radiating from her hairline, damp and curling with sweat. Rey didn’t give any ground. She stood still with her arms crossed over her chest defensively. Only the uneven acceleration of her breathing revealed her tension.

He took off his glove, again slow and deliberate, one finger at a time. He raised his bare hand toward her face and it was drawn toward those flyaway hairs. He touched one—and _felt_ it, soft and springy against his fingertip. Her lips parted in shock and his breath thundered in his lungs, echoing in the space between them. He tucked the hair behind her ear, his finger brushing the warm shell with an electric charge.

He could touch her. Could he touch (he swallowed) other things? Her clothes? Grab for her saber?

In her impatience, Rey answered the question first. She grabbed at his mask, her fingers moving unerringly to the clasps under his jaw, and flicked them open. He jerked away but it was too late. She hooked her fingers under the edge and flipped it backward off his head. It clattered to the floor and rolled, ringing, until the wall stopped it.

He stared at her, hating the way she always stripped him down to nothing. She refused to leave him alone. They couldn’t be together because of _her_ ; it was her choice, and yet she wouldn’t let him forget her. He’d make her regret it.

 _Where are you, stubborn Jedi?_ he wondered, straining for a better glimpse of the aurora around her. An impression of gritty sand and stark white sun-bleached sky… Jakku? Could she possibly have gone back _there_?

She smiled at him, not coyly or slyly—a big grin, ridiculously full of teeth. “See you soon, Ben.” And vanished.

Kylo’s hand clamped down on her shoulder but she was gone. He was left with a shining hair wound through his fingers and the sinking anxiety that he’d miscalculated somehow. And when the klaxons began to blare, signalling an incoming attack, he knew it.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from John Donne's poem "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning."


End file.
